Galatia (click to see map)
In trying to pin down just who the
Galatians were, I am dazzled by the migrations of huge numbers of people.
For example I found that Gauls/Celts had come from what is now Eastern Europe,
in c. 278/277 BC. Wikipedia says: Three tribes crossed over
from Thrace to Asia Minor. They numbered about 10,000 fighting men and about
the same number of women and children.
(I have recently been
amazed to learn that the Vikings got themselves to Austria! How intrepid
were these people. I reckon they carried no spare fat on their bodies!)
So the Galatians were
no wimps. They were fighting men; they were hired as mercenaries in those
warring times. They were called Galatians because their ancestors were
Celts who had come from Gaul. No doubt there was also a healthy mix of Greek as
well.
I wonder if the
“churches of Galatia” could be at least some of the Seven Churches of
Revelation.
There is just too much
to learn! I’ve just looked up Gaul in my big Bible Atlas.
Christianity was spread back to Gaul from this Asia Minor area. To quote:
Relations between Asia Minor and south-east Gaul (France) remained close: it
was from Asia Minor that Gaul was evangelised. When the churches of
Ludgunum (Lyons) and Vienna, in the Rhone Valley, suffered a severe persecution
in AD 177, it was to the churches of Asia Minor that the survivors wrote with
details of the persecution; and it was from Asia Minor (probably from the
vicinity of Smyrna) that the new bishop of Lyon was brought to replace the
bishop who had died in the persecution. The new bishop, Iranaeus, was a
theological writer of the early church.
Joyce Voysey
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